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Friday, November 3, 2017

When in the morning Sheik leaves home with his backpack, his grandparents believe that he comes to school; but most of the days he does not arrive here. His father disappeared from home one day. His mother went to live with another man. The child stayed with the grandparents who are in years and also sick. Sheik has no one who cares for him, no one to help him grow. The street is his teacher.
To the mother of Akter, one of our students, it is better for the girl to play truant. Her husband also left and was never heard from again. She has to work 8 hours a day picking tea leaves. At home, Akter has a small legion of brothers, sisters and cousins who must be cared for, cleaned and fed. So half of the days she does not come to school.
We are working hard to make sure that our students do not stop coming to school. We visit them in their homes, we talk to their parents or whoever is in charge of them, we try to convince them of the importance of coming to school, to learn things, to open their eyes to the world beyond the small horizon of this rural, forgotten, depressed area. We try to make the school a friendly place. We are not doing badly so far; out of 97 students only three or four have stopped coming. This number is much higher in other schools in the area, up to 35% in some cases. I hope we will succeed, for the sake of these children and their families. With God's help.